Who will be the Scotswoman of the Year for 2009?

The guessing game is almost over. All will finally be revealed tonight at a glittering dinner in the spectacular banqueting hall of Glasgow City Chambers.

The evening, now in its 47th year and sponsored by St Enoch, is hosted by broadcaster Cathy MacDonald and about 200 guests from all walks of life will attend, including the Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini, and Lady Provost Sheena Winter.

Actresses Libby McArthur, Barbara Rafferty, Julie Wilson Nimmo and Gwyneth Guthrie will also be there, as will lingerie tycoon Michelle Mone.

Also attending will be many of our previous winners, including last year’s joint Scotswomen of the Year, Jean Donnachie and Noreen Real, who organised patrols against the dawn raids on asylum seekers in their high-rise flats in Scotstoun; and Mary Miller, winner of International Scotswoman of the Year, who won the award for her work with children in Zimbabwe affected by HIV and Aids as well as her many years with the Jeely Piece Club in Castlemilk.

We’ll also look forward to seeing last year’s winner of the Scots Sportswoman of the Year award, Paralympian gold medallist and cyclist Aileen McGlynn, and the winner of the Scots Businesswoman of the Year title, Rabinder Buttar, chief executive and founder of ClinTec International.

Finalists for the main award this year are 39-year-old Eileen Granger, of Prestwick; Kerry-Ann Hindley, 31, of East Kilbride; Lynn Murray, 44, of Drymen; and Dr Margo Whiteford, 50, of Strathblane.

Eileen, whose six-year-old son Ross has survived a rare cancer of the kidneys, has raised more than £200,000 over the years for CLIC Sargent, the UK’s leading cancer charity for children, and regularly helps out at the charity’s holiday home in Prestwick.

Kerry-Ann, once a troubled youngster who ended up homeless, is now an inspiration to other young people. Winner of the national Lesley Pearse Woman of Courage Award last year, she is about to take up a new job with Glasgow City Council as a youth worker, and is also commander of 2 Troop Scots Dragoon Guards Detachment of the Glasgow & Lanarkshire Battalion Army Cadet Force.

Lynn, the smiling face of the Beatson Pebble Appeal, lost a leg to bone cancer when she was just 15 and five years ago was diagnosed with breast cancer. Today, she combines her job as an office manager with running Think Pink Scotland, a charity she set up with friends to raise funds for breast cancer research in Scotland. It has so far raised £310,000, some of which has bought new equipment for the Pathology Department at the Western Infirmary while the rest is going towards Think Pink’s £250,000 goal to help fund a laboratory at the new state-of-the-art Beatson Translational Research Centre in Glasgow.

Margo has never let the fact that she was born with spina bifida hold her back. She graduated as a doctor and is now consultant in genetics at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children at Yorkhill. Last year, she celebrated her half-century by taking part in the London Marathon in her wheelchair and she has raised hundreds of thousands of p0unds for the Scottish Spina Bifida Association, which she chairs.

The Scots Sportswoman of the Year finalists are:

• Eileen Adams, 56, of Glasgow, who has coached elite Scots swimmers to success for the past 25 years and who is regarded as among the best in the business internationally. She is now performance coach for the City of Glasgow Swim Team.
• Catriona Matthew, 40, of North Berwick, is one of the world’s leading golfers. She won the prestigious Ricoh Women’s British Open at Royal Lytham, one of the world’s four Majors, just 11 weeks after she gave birth to her second daughter. She also won the HSBC LPGA Brazil Cup last year.
• Catriona Morrison, 33, of Broxburn, is a triathlete and reigning world long-distance duathlon champion. Catriona, who was brought up in Scotstoun in Glasgow, visits schools in West Lothian to inspire pupils through sport to achieve their potential.

The Finalists in the Scots Businesswoman of the Year are:

• Former accountants Clare Thommen, 31, and Fiona McLean, 34, who run Boudiche, the luxury lingerie company with shops in Glasgow and Edinburgh as well as an online store.
• Elizabeth Roddick, 59, who runs the New Life Pharmacy in Netherlee, believes in combining conventional medicine with alternative remedies. She tripled the size of her premises in Netherlee in the summer, increasing business by 70% since then.
• Young mum Karen Campbell, 33, of Newton Mearns, is the youngest female CEO in Scotland. She is chief of the £330 million Maxim development, the UK’s largest speculatively built office park, based at Eurocentral on the M8, which is set to create more than 8000 jobs.